Sibling Fluff
by ICantBelieveImWritingFanFict
Summary: Of all the people in Amity Park, he hadn't expected it to be Dash who finally noticed. Well, he supposed, he was technically the most likely to notice, what with shoving him into lockers every day, but Danny had been coming to school with varying degrees of injuries since Freshman year, and, to tell the truth, Danny mostly hadn't expected him to care. Warning: Self Injury


Of all the people in Amity Park, he hadn't expected it to be _Dash _who finally noticed. Well, he supposed, he was _technically _the most likely to notice, what with shoving him into lockers every day, but Danny had been coming to school with varying degrees of injuries since Freshman year, and, to tell the truth, Danny mostly hadn't expected him to _care. _

He most _certainly _didn't expect him to tell the school counselor. Who then called his parents. That hadn't been so bad, at least not at first. They hadn't believed him; after all, didn't people who cut themselves usually have scars on their _arms_? It wasn't until they made him shown them, pointed out how regular they were, and how the varying stages of healing meant they'd happened at different times that they stopped laughing and his mom started hugging him.

His dad never really figured out what to say; even after two months later, his dad still gave him looks and long silences that Danny knew meant he _wanted _to help, but didn't know how. The whole thing just gave Danny even _more_ guilt than he already had, even if it _was _more convenient to going ghost now that Jack would bolt from the room whenever he asked to be alone.

His mom, on the other hand, just wanted to spend time with him, and make him talk, as if being smothered was all he needed. She kept pretending everything was fine, even though she now watched him like a hawk, and made them eat tense, awkward family dinners. He could hear his parents fighting more often now, but the one advantage of ghost powers was you never really had to stay locked in your room when you didn't really want to.

School wasn't really so bad either; sure, gossip at Casper High spread faster than ectoplasm through a white shirt, but he'd long given up on caring what anyone at school thought. The teachers had even started defending him from bullies, giving him sympathy for missed homework or absences. A few kids had started talking to him, although most people now seemed to avoid him like the plague, as if depression was a disease, or his scars would suddenly split open and ruin their perfect shoes.

Valerie… well, she'd _tried_ to start talking to him again, just after the Red Huntress had landed an exceptional hit on Danny Phantom's side. It was still hurting when she walked over, and he wasn't sure what he'd said to her- probably something along the lines of "I don't want your pity"- and she hadn't come back… He really hated himself for that, and the next day, he let her land as many punches on him as she threw…

Funnily enough, Sam and Tucker were some of the last people to know; they just assumed it was just scars from ghost fights for a couple days, and he got pity points for having to deal with all the backlash. It wasn't until one of them happened to ask _which_ ghost and Danny botched up his excuse that it even _occurred _to them there might be some truth to the rumors.

You would have thought they'd just caught him attempting suicide…

Sam actually punched him and started yelling, calling him an idiot and a jerk until Tucker pointed out that that probably wasn't helping… And then there was silence. It was a tense, awkward silence, the kind that hadn't existed between the three of them for years. When he tried to fill it with a joke about only being half-dead, Sam actually started _crying_ and telling him all the reasons he was a wonderful person, why he deserved to _live, _and, suddenly, Danny was the one comforting _her. _

It took him the better part of two hours to calm her down, and he wasn't sure she ever actually believed him when he said he _wasn't_ suicidal… Tucker believed him, though… At least Danny _thought _he did; they both still looked at him funny, and were overly supportive… They went out of their way to tell him every day how much they cared about him, how much they were there for him… and he could see the way their faces fell when new scars appeared.

He knew they felt responsible, knew they would take the blades away from him if they thought they could find them. But they couldn't find them, couldn't help him, and whenever he thought about what he was doing to them, he _didn't _cut himself; he went out looking for a fight and wound up with worse injuries than he could ever inflict on himself.

But _none_ of that compared to the way he felt when his caller ID read "Jazz Fenton."

He'd asked his parents not to tell her. It had been his only request; he somehow just_ knew _that he wouldn't be able to handle the disappointment in her voice when she realized he wasn't the invincible superhero she made him out to be…

Except, she didn't say anything about it; she talked the way they normally did, asked the same questions she always did, and when he asked if she'd heard she replied with a simple "heard what?" and didn't probe further when he told her it was nothing…

It wasn't until she mentioned that she had a club meeting next Thursday, so she would have to call at 7 on Friday instead that he even realized that this _wasn't _in response to any rumors about cutting himself; she was just calling at the same time, on the same day, as she had every week since she went to college…

The call even ended the way it always did

"You know you can-"

"Tell you anything, I know."

"Love you!"

"Love you too…"

"I'm proud of you…"

That was it.

For the first time since Dash had shoved him just a little too high up the wall, just hard enough to reopen the cut from the night before, Danny managed to have a conversation with someone without feeling guilty.

It helped, more than anything, or anyone, to just be able to have that conversation with his sister, without her judging him, or watching him, just… being able to talk and have her listen. That conversation was all he could think about when his parents took him to the psychologist who believed every lie he quoted off Wikipedia. That was what he thought about when his friends thought he was lying.

And so, as Sam and Tucker kept to their concerned glances, and his parents walked on tiptoes, as some kids at school avoided him, and some claimed he only wanted attention, he always knew he could talk to Jazz because she _didn't know. _

He started calling her, just to talk to her about random things; things he was learning in school, ghost fights, and his status on his powers. And he listened as she talked about new friends, new places, and sciency things that went over his head. She always picked up, and always talked to him for as long as he wanted, even when she had a test the next day.

He started calling her whenever he couldn't handle the looks from his friends or the glances from his peers. He called her when he came home after a ghost fight, too tired to find any dinner. Sometimes, he wasn't even sure _why _he was calling her, just that he needed to hear her voice, and just let her talk to _him _until he fell asleep…

He started telling her things, random, unimportant things, just to have an excuse to keep talking. He told her about the time he'd pranked Dash Baxter and ended up on the flagpole. About the time he'd gotten lost in the ghost zone and had to find his way back.

He told her about the kids who tripped him in the hallway, the way he could see them coming, and had to make himself fall to make it look natural. He told her about the ghost zone, the doors, the River of Revulsion and the Acropolis of Athens.

He told her about his ghost half; the sensation of his hands rested on the edge of the portal, the way it felt for an ectoblast to burn your skin, for ice to form on the palm of your hand.

He told her about people and places and tiny little details, random images that just seemed to stick, to stand out in his mind.

He told her about eyes; red eyes, brown eyes, purple… The black of a bird he'd matched in fight, the blue of a boy who thought he was a hero, the green of a dying copy…

And then, finally, he told her.

About a little ghost girl who was travelling the world while he _should _be taking care of her… He told her about the mistakes he'd made, about the panic in the middle of a fight when, after a bad landing, he wasn't sure if he could make it, about the little boy who'd died in his arms before he could even make it to the hospital…

And every time, no matter what he told her, no matter how pathetic and weak he made himself sound, every single time she said she was proud of him…

And then, one day, he couldn't go to school. He stood there, outside the doors, for a long time, just staring, invisible, unable to summon the willpower to change back, to go inside, to face _them_… So, instead, he flew.

He wasn't quite sure _where _he was going, or how long it took him to get there. It wasn't until he was watching the sunset setting over a foreign city that he even recognized this place as Jazz's dorm.

And when she opened the door, he just started talking.

He told her about the boy who turned into a monster when people walked into his room, about the ghosts who had lost their speech in Walker's Prison; afterlife without parole.

He told her about the Frightnight and Dora, Frostbite and Pariah Dark. He told her about Vlad and how he'd wanted so badly, just once, to go with him, to let him teach him, train him, rather than stumbling through this blind and alone.

He told her about Valerie and fighting and men in white suits. About cages and needles and people who cheered and people who booed.

He told her about Sam and Tucker, about the way they looked at him, worriedly, questioningly, every single day, as if judging his ability to stand.

He told her about the portal. Told her about the chill of rings as he transformed, about how sometimes he wasn't sure he was human, how sometimes, he couldn't feel his own heart. He told her about going intangible, about being separated, apart, untouchable and unaffected, and sometimes he felt like he was floating in outer space, drifting farther and farther away from anything but a dull, inescapable, numbness, and how he was so terrified because sometimes he liked it that way and sometimes he wished the portal hadn't stopped halfway, had just finished what it started.

That sometimes he wasn't even sure it hadn't already.

That sometimes he pressed a blade into his thigh just to prove to himself he was still alive.

And then there was silence; he wasn't quite sure when her roommate had left, or how long they'd been there, but he felt someone's arms around him and he realized he had hung his head, ashamed, and crying.

"I know… Danny… I know… I'm so sorry… I'm so proud of you…"


End file.
